Free Republic

DERRY, N.H. — Mitt Romney says he can appeal to Tea Partiers, even though activists and groups aligned with the movement are stressing that they need to defeat him in 2012. “I think I line up pretty well with the Tea Party,” he said in response to a question from The Daily Caller after touring the Derry Feed and Supply store. “They want to see smaller government. So do I.” But not everyone associated with the movement see Romney as one of them. Joe Miller, a former U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska and a Tea Party darling, is now running...

Romney leads in NH, Trump makes things interesting Mitt Romney's still the clear early front runner to take the Republican primary in New Hampshire next year but for the first time in our polling of the race PPP finds someone within single digits of him...Donald Trump. If Trump actually run 21% of New Hampshire GOP voters say they'd vote for him, compared to 27% for Romney. The key to Trump's relatively strong showing? He does well with birthers and Tea Partiers, two groups he has seemed to actively court with his public comments of late. 42% of primary voters firmly...

A highlight: Shortly after unlovable Mitt finished speaking, he was upstaged by Sarah Palin, who isn't even attending the conference. A Palin look-alike (a pretty good one, actually) entered the ballroom and immediately attracted a massive crowd. For a moment, everyone thought it was a surprise appearance by the one candidate all the (non-Ron Paul supporting) attendees are actually excited by.

Without having compared the hardcover to the paperback myself, I’m duty-bound to add a question mark to the headline. But his spokesman is quoted in the piece and didn’t push back hard against the allegation, so I assume it’s a fair cop. On what planet does he gain more by doing this than he loses? In the original hardcover, Romney tried to carefully distinguish between the Massachusetts [health-care] law and the national version that was nearing passage as he wrote.But the Massachusetts model has become Romney’s bête noire among conservatives, who loathe the national reform they call “Obamacare.” The rewritten...

As I type this, I am watching former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on “The Wendy Williams Show” talking about his impending talk show on Fox and am reminded, not for the first time, that quite a few presidential candidates function as if they never expected or even wanted to be president in the first place. They ran to gain a media platform. But few have done so as brazenly as Huckabee, who typically ended his homespun stump homilies with pedestrian pluckings of his bass guitar. Huckabee’s ultimate role in the 2008 race was to assist in the splintering of evangelicals...

Heh. Admittedly, this is pure comment bait, but I do find it fascinating that she remains the most popular Republican in these polls month after month while making no headway against Huck and Mitt and actually losing ground to a dark horse like Gingrich. I don’t want to overstate things — she’s only five points back of the lead — but a media superstar with a double-digit edge in favorability who’s already been on a national ticket and who’s wildly more dynamic than her competition should probably be … way ahead, no? Instead, this: Huckabee leads the way, such as...

The political axiom is familiar today. Republicans nominate the next in line. So it's been from Richard Nixon to John McCain. The next presidential cycle could prove otherwise. The GOP establishment no longer rides herd over today's elephants. Conservative activists are both exceptionally galvanized and autonomous. It's a unique mix unseen in decades. And critically, the establishment's early favorite has an Achilles heel. This conservative milieu begs the question: is 2012 the year of the Republican dark horse? Mitt Romney should be the next Republican nominee. No less than 81 percent of Republican "insiders" say that Romney is the "most...

Utah's favorite political son made no apologies Saturday for his conservative cred -- a stance thousands of backers in the Beehive State hope will propel Mitt Romney to the White House. Speaking at the Salt Palace Convention Center hall, Romney weaved wit, humor and folksy anecdotes around enough anti-Barack Obama broadsides to energize his fawning fans. Most in attendance braved a sloppy snowstorm to hoist campaign-style signs, giving Romney's No Apology: The Case for American Greatness book tour the feel of a 2012 campaign rally. "I hope he does run," Midway's Bart Kotter said afterward. "The guy is an amazing...